What is your preferred Desktop or Window Manager

I'm curious as to what the current breakdown is. Just because I'm interested in such things.

I don't know whether this place is a representative cross-section of the Linux using public but still.

I realise people run different desktops on different hardware, one for laptop, one for netbook etc. So I suppose I'm asking about the one you consider your main system, the one you use the most. Or the desktop you like using most. Either is valid I think.

I'm sorry if I miss off anything major. I can't list them all as there is not room on the internet.

Well, I've voted for XFCE, on the basis that it's the most bearable desktop these days, but KDE3 was my favourite. As I believe nelz said of KDE4 in an article in the magazine, the most misleading thing about it is the name, it isn't really KDE.

nelz wrote:KDE4 is not KDE3 in the same way a Ford Focus is not a Ford Escort, even though both are replacements for the older product.

Having used KDE since one of the 1.x versions, I found the transitions up through 2.x and 3.x pretty smooth, things just seemed to get better looking and gained more functions (despite the odd hiccough). Even though KDE4.x has worked pretty well since about 4.4, I still can't get used to it...
As for the "semantic desktop" aspect of it, I've not seen any apparent practical functionality arise out of all that indexing going on. OTOH, when Kontact came along as a wrapper for KMail, Kaddressbook and the rest, it made some sort of sense, it was useful.
Oh well, I'm not going to ramble on about this any more, KDE4 gripes are old hat and not what this thread is about.

I use KDE, and that's what I voted for, but in truth its features are way over the top for me. The only reason I stick with it is that the small subset of its features which I do use can't easily be fulfilled in the other desktops. The main difficulty with XFCE and LXDE has been the lack of a menu editor, and now that one is available I might soon be moving to one of those.

I've been using Xfce for several years now. I find it provides the best balance between features and bloat, as well as providing a good level of customisation without making me spend hours trying to get things set up the way I want them (which KDE does) or leaving me annoyed by things that I can't change (which Gnome has done for a long time).

Its not bug free, but works well and is light enough to allow me good good performance. Can't ask for much more.....

roseway wrote:I use KDE, and that's what I voted for, but in truth its features are way over the top for me. The only reason I stick with it is that the small subset of its features which I do use can't easily be fulfilled in the other desktops. The main difficulty with XFCE and LXDE has been the lack of a menu editor, and now that one is available I might soon be moving to one of those.

I am aware of the menu editor for LXDE, lxmed, which works extremely well, and looks just like alacarte, but it is only for LXDE, and does not work for XFCE. Have I missed something here? A search has not shown anything available.

ajgreeny wrote:I am aware of the menu editor for LXDE, lxmed, which works extremely well, and looks just like alacarte, but it is only for LXDE, and does not work for XFCE. Have I missed something here? A search has not shown anything available.

ajgreeny wrote:I am aware of the menu editor for LXDE, lxmed, which works extremely well, and looks just like alacarte, but it is only for LXDE, and does not work for XFCE. Have I missed something here? A search has not shown anything available.

Fluxbox all the way for me. I got converted to Blackbox back in the day when my box was just too slow for KDE (at least for Mandrake's interpretation of it). Then having got used to the Slit, and moved to Fluxbox with its tabbed windows, I haven't really looked for or found anything better.

KDE for the win! Like many I thought 4.0 was a bit ropey but then we were told this by KDE themselves. However, since 4.3 I've found it stable, usable and very presentable. Although some of the default presentation settings offered in recent versions are starting to grate, I can get it looking how I like it very quickly and easily. Forgive the flame bait, but I find it much prettier than Gnome/GTK based desktops.